One Democratic State Is The Way Forward

"Building on the Madrid, Boston, and Haifa conferences, a select group of activists from a variety of backgrounds convened last weekend in Dallas, Texas in order to implement an international project - to pass a declaration which professes the need for creating a single democratic state in what is now occupied Palestine....

Speakers included: Dr.Mazin Qumsiyeh, Palestinian author and expert on Palestinian refugee rights, who spoke to us via video from occupied Palestine. Lenni Brenner, Jewish anti-Zionist author of Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. Gilad Atzmon, Israeli-born British jazz musician and anti-Zionist political activist and writer, who spoke to us from Britain. Paul Hershfield, co-founding member of the Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid, Southern California. Richard Falk, professor of international law at Princeton University. Virginia Tilley, professor of political science, author of The One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock, who spoke to us from South Africa.

Who We Are:

We are the people of Palestine and our descendants, working with all those who value justice and peace to establish a grassroots international movement of the one democratic state in Palestine (ODS) that can serve all its people equally. We are a movement expressing the vision of existing solidarity organizations, groups, and individuals articulating the aspirations for ODS as it has been eloquently stated in the Declaration of One Democratic State in Palestine.

Mission & Objectives

Mission:

The two-state solution to the conflict in Israel/Palestine has lost credibility because the conditions imposed by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories have made it impossible. Yet the alternative–a unified democratic state such as was created in South Africa– contradicts how the world understands the basic formula for a peaceful resolution, which assumes that Israeli Jewish and Palestinians cannot live together peacefully and must be physically and politically divided into two independent states.

Division of Israel-Palestine into two states is not only impossible, it is fundamentally racist. We reject the Zionist claim that Jewish people can seize Palestine while depriving Palestinians of their rights to live freely and with equal rights in their ancestral homeland. But we reject just as strongly the equally racist idea that Israeli Jews and Palestinians cannot share a non-ethnic democratic state in Palestine peacefully and find a new future together in a unified country. We believe and affirm that the only just, viable and stable solution to the conflict is a non-ethnic unified democratic state in all the territory now controlled by Israel.

Objectives:

1. The creation of a unified one democratic state in Mandate Palestine

2. Repudiate Zionism and eliminate all forms of discrimination and segregation and end violence, militarism, and warfare

3. Unify Jewish Israelis and Palestinians in a shared non-ethnic democratic state in Palestine

4. Restore Palestinian inalienable rights in Palestine and to compensate Palestinians for their pain and suffering

5. Establish an international solidarity movement, composed of individuals and organizations, to organize and spearhead efforts to realize the objectives of one democratic state in Palestine.